Las Vegas: Ford Racing race quotes

CARL EDWARDS-63-Mittler Bros. Machine & Tool Ford F-150 (Finished 36th)
YOU WENT BEHIND THE WALL ON THE SECOND LAP, WHAT HAPPENED? "It was going
really great this weekend, but I think the crankshaft broke off the
motor. Pretty wild. I think...

YOU WENT BEHIND THE WALL ON THE SECOND LAP, WHAT HAPPENED? "It was going
really great this weekend, but I think the crankshaft broke off the
motor. Pretty wild. I think I ran over it. I have to thank the Mittler
Brothers, Mike Mittler. Darrell Hoffman builds great motors; this was
just a freak deal. We had a great truck today. I was really excited to
run well."

THIS PUSHES YOUR TOTAL STARTS IN THE TRUCK SERIES TO SEVEN
FOR THE SEASON. ARE YOU DONE RACING THIS YEAR TO PRESERVE YOUR ROOKIE
STATUS FOR 2003? "That's the last race of the season for us with me as
the driver. Right now we're just looking to secure sponsorship to run
all of them next year. We're going to win races next year. Our plan is
to have me run for Rookie-of-the-Year honors and I think we can do it.
I'm confident."

RICK CRAWFORD-14-Circle Bar Motel & RV Park Ford F-150 (Finished 6th)

"It wasn't a real happy truck today for some reason. It would run in
spurts. It would give me 10 to 15 laps at a time and then it wouldn't do
what I wanted it to do on the race track. The Circle Bar guys put
another consistent finish together, but in order to win the championship
you have to outrun the 16, and we weren't in contention to outrun him
today."

YOU PITTED UNDER THE FINAL CAUTION, GIVING UP SIXTH PLACE TO
RESTART NINTH. "We needed to have some fuel. We weren't going to finish
it to the end. This Ford F-150 has a comfortable ride, but it sure
doesn't get fuel gas mileage. If you've got horsepower under the hood,
you have to feed it, so we had to give it some fuel to make it until the
end."

DID THE NUMBER OF CAUTIONS SURPRISE YOU TODAY? "That's the norm
when you get to places like this and Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan. You
can spread out, you can race because you have plenty of room, a lot of
green-flag laps."

YOU MANAGE TO STAY IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP HUNT EVEN
THOUGH MIKE BLISS FINISHED SECOND. "Has anybody said he's the champion
yet?"

ANDY HOUSTON-15-Billy Ballew Motorsports Ford F-150 (Finished 12th)

"It
wasn't too bad. We struggled really. We struggled real bad in the
race. We could never find the balance on the thing. It started out on
the first run, it was extremely tight, and that was kind of a shocker
because last night we were real loose. We made some adjustments on the
first stop and got it real loose and absolutely couldn't drive it. And
then we pretty much compromised on what we had to start with and we kind
of went back like that. That was the best the truck was
driveability-wise. Still, we were a little off. I think we're missing a
little bit of something on our aero package or something, but we'll work
on it. The first race with all of these guys and Billy Ballew on a
limited budget, to come home 12th isn't anything to hang your head
about. We'll get ready to go to California, and try to progress out
there, and hopefully by Homestead we'll be able to be a contender."

DID
THE NUMBER OF CAUTION FLAGS SURPRISE YOU TODAY? "Yeah, somewhat. The
quality of the guys in the series is getting a lot better and the quality
of trucks is getting a lot better. When you have that and everybody is
running real smart, you'll see a race where you won't have a lot of
cautions. This place is pretty notorious for not having many cautions.
It's a pretty wide race track and not real hard to get around. We felt
like there would be some long runs, but we didn't realize there would
only be one or two throughout the course of the day."

TERRY COOK-29-Power Stroke Diesel Ford F-150 (Finished 27th)

"I don't
know what to do about this bad luck, it's rotten. I don't know exactly
what happened, but we burned a hole through a heat shield on a tailpipe,
right underneath the seat and it proceeded to burn the heat shields
underneath the seat; it caught them on fire actually. We had all kinds
of smoke and fumes inside the truck. I couldn't even see where we were
going, so we came in, ripped them out and went back out and got going.
Then it was so hot under the seat that we had to come back in. We just
sucked all day. I don't know how else to say it. We tried a couple of
things at the end of the day to try to make the truck better, and we
really couldn't make it that much better, either. We just missed the
package out here somewhere. I'm not sure where, but, man, we have to get
that under control because our mile-and-a-half program just sucks right
now. I feel good about the remaining three races, but you still have a
ton of mile-and-a-half tracks on the schedule, and we have to get a
handle on this because this is bad. The gremlins that bit us today, I
don't know, I'm going to call it bad because we prepare a great race
truck each and every week, and to have stuff like that happen is just a
freak deal. Even with a truck that could have run a whole race, we
probably we still only a 10th through 15th truck, and I'm not sure where
we came home today."

DOES THIS CHANGE THE MENTALITY OF HOW YOU APPROACH
THE REMAINING THREE RACES? "Not really, we're still trying to get some
wins and we came up way short today. I really enjoy Fontana, and Fontana
has always been good to us, so hopefully we go out there and contend for
the victory because we sure didn't here."

JON WOOD-50-U.S. Navy Racing Ford F-150 (Finished 18th)

DID YOU HAVE
TROUBLE GETTING A HANDLE ON THE TRUCK? "It was loose all day. I'm
actually a little surprised we were that far off. We weren't this bad
yesterday. I'm actually pretty surprised we were as bad as we are.
We've struggled a little bit at these big places, but not nearly this
bad. I don't know what to say about it."

WHEN THERE ARE ONLY TWO
CAUTION PERIODS IN A RACE WHERE YOU HAVE AN ILL-HANDLING TRUCK, DOES THAT
ADD TO YOUR FRUSTRATIONS? "When you're that bad, you hope for no
cautions, so it will hurry up and be over."

WITH THE FINAL THREE RACES
BEING HELD ON TRACKS ONE MILE OR LARGER, DO YOU FEEL CONFIDENT YOU CAN
FIX THE PROBLEM? "I think we're getting it figured out. It's just going
to be a matter of time."